


Ain’t Nobody’s Business But Mine

by justanothersong



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Crack, Alternate Universe - Western, Crack, Dean is Seventeen Years Old, Doctor Castiel, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Mild Gore, Mild Smut, Mildly Dubious Consent, Not John Friendly, Old West, Wildly Historically Inaccurate, cross-dressing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-12 07:20:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2100567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a doctor in the small Montana Territory town of Perdition, Castiel had seen just about everything.<br/>That is, he thought he had, until an outlaw named Alastair arrived with his unwilling bride in tow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dean is 17 at the start of this and engages in/is referenced to having engaged in sexual acts with an older male. To me this is well beyond the age of reason and I do not consider it underage, but some might, so consider yourself forewarned.
> 
> Most likely wildly historically inaccurate.
> 
> I don't have an explanation for this. Sometimes I get weird ideas. Unapologetic crack. I can't even.
> 
> Feel free to follow me on [Tumblr](http://literatec.tumblr.com)!

The sun was already hanging high at midday when Castiel heard the tell-tale sound of hoofbeats pounding down the dusty road towards his home. He sighed and stood, rinsing the blood from his hands the best he could in the dish of water he’d prepared the night before; it’d had gone cold by now, hours since it had been set to boil when Miss Ellen’s wagon pulled up, her hand Ash stretched out in the back. It had been a bad break, the worst Castiel had seen since he arrived in the little town of Perdition, in the Montana territory. The bone had broken clean but the man’s fall had sent the sharpened femur piercing through muscle and skin. 

Castiel had done what he could. At best, Ash would walk with a limp for the rest of his life. At worst, infection would set in and he’d lose the leg, if not his life. Only time would tell. For the moment, he was out cold, the laudanum and ether having quelled his pain and allowed him some sleep while the young doctor had plastered his leg. 

Castiel was young by most physician standards, but a town like Perdition took what they could get. Not yet even thirty, the doctor had arrived on a stagecoach a year or so prior, all the way from Boston, and his practice had been booming ever since. The townspeople had been kind enough to grant him the deed to the old judge’s home on the edge of town; it was large and had space enough for him to create his own small hospital on the lower floors, and besides, it had been all but abandoned since the old crook Crowley had been run out of town. It was far enough away from the town proper to afford some privacy and quiet, so the sound of horses on the oncoming road when he had no appointments could only mean a new patient, most likely an emergency.

 

“Is there a doctor in this heap of trash town or ain’t there?” a voice hollered, and Castiel sighed. The last he had wanted to deal with on a day like this, when he hadn’t had sleep since being roused from his bed the night before, were the rough and tumble cowboy and outlaw types that rolled through Perdition now and again, and it sounded like that was just who he was about to greet.

He took off his pocketwatch and family ring, tucking them away in a dresser, before putting on his coat and heading down to the porch to greet his visitors. It never hurt to be careful, after all. There weren’t many folks in Perdition who could pay for his services, and the few who could never had much to give. When rowdy horseman showed up, he made sure to put away his meager valuables for safekeeping.

He held back an exasperated sigh when he made his way out the front door. There were six men on horseback, each looking more worse for wear than the next. The one in front was particularly ugly, with a thin and haggard figure. A jagged scar crossed his face, one eye gone milky white, and he rasped as he spoke.

“You the doc?” he asked.

Castiel resisted the urge to cringe. “I am,” he relented. “Though I’m afraid I may be too late to help you, Mr…?”

The man gave a throaty cough and then spat, righting his hat that had gone crooked with the motion of his expectoration. 

“Hobble your lip! Ain’t here for me,” he growled, clearly offended. “For thissun,” he added, and pulled at a hand that had been gripping his belt. It was only then that Castiel saw the woman on the ugly man’s mount, and he had to restrain himself from stepping forward in anger when the man twisted her by the arm and nearly pushed her from the saddle. 

She landed on her knees in the dust and didn’t stand, just stayed knelt there, straightening the old-fashioned bonnet on her head and brushing gravel from her calico dress. Castiel wanted to go help the lady up, but knew better than to make such a gesture in front of a man like this, the type who clearly saw her as property.

“What… what seems to be the problem?” he asked with forced calmness. 

“Been dragging thissun ‘round on my horse for damn near two years and she ain’t never stopped with her bleedin’,” the man replied. He moved to continue but another fit of coughing took him and he was at it a good minute or two before he spat into the dirt once again. If he noticed the tinge of red to the spittle clinging to his lip, he didn’t mention it; Castiel didn’t either. 

“Every damn doctor out this way is a shave tail if there ever was, you’re the first any town seems right by. Got no room on my horse for a woman I ain’t beddin’. Word is you could fix’er up right,” the man went on, earning some sniggering from his compatriots.

“Ain’t no use for a woman can’t unlock her knees!” one shouted, earning another round of laughter.

“Sure got purdy lips though,” another added, and the leader gave a greasy grin.

“Say doc, you gonna help me out? Me and the boys headin’ back to the town proper, try some of that boss whiskey they got at your roadhouse. Figure I’ll leave the woman with you, see if you can’t straight her out,” the leader said.

Castiel frowned. “I don’t know that there is much I can do for her here,” Castiel began, and when he noted the slump of the woman’s shoulders, he quickly added, “But I’ll do my best. Take your time in town, maybe I’ll have an answer for you when you return.”

The ugly man whooped, and ground his heels into his horse’s sides, turning quickly and heading back down the road he had arrived on. The rest of his gang soon followed, the lone woman left shivering in the dirt.

Castiel quickly moved down the stairs of his porch, striding towards the cowering woman with definite purpose. He felt miserable for having left her to suffer through such a shameful display, but it was delicate work, dealing with the likes of the ugly man and his gang, and Castiel knew he’d be no good to anyone at all if he was shot dead on his front porch for running his mouth.

“I’m sorry, miss,” he said, extending a hand to help her to her feet. She struggled a moment before she stood, and Castiel was surprised to find her nearly as tall as he was. She kept her gaze lowered, face obscured by the bonnet that Castiel thought must be at least fifteen years out of style; it vaguely reminded him of what he’d seen his mother wear in his youth.

“Why don’t you come on inside? I’m a physician, but I won’t press on with anything you don’t want. You’re safe here. I’ll get you a cup of tea and a meal, see if we can’t find a way to help you, what do you say?” he said, voice as gentle as he could take his gruff tenor.

She looked up at his words, gratefulness shining in the greenest gaze that Castiel had ever set eyes on. She was a pretty thing, all long lashes, sweet freckled skin, dark blonde hair falling out of curls pinned up beneath her bonnet, and a full pretty mouth. Castiel was surprised such a lovely thing could be tied up with such an angry creature, but even more surprised when she nodded her assent; the high collar of her dress fell just slightly, and the doctor squinted and frowned when he spotted his guest’s Adam’s apple.


	2. Chapter 2

The doctor made good on his promise. He brought his guest into his home and heated some beans left from the previous night’s dinner on the stove, alongside an old tea kettle filled with water from the pump out back. Noting the boy’s – for of that, he was now certain – thin frame, he cut a thick slice of salt pork from the cellar and fried it up alongside the beans. 

“It’s not much, I’m afraid,” Castiel said with a sigh. “I haven’t been able to hire on any help, and most days I’m so wrapped up with my patient’s that I don’t really plan for guests.” 

The bread was days old but Castiel never would have guessed it with the way the boy scooped up his beans and shoved them into his mouth, pausing to gnaw at the bacon and slurp at his cup of tea. On a hunch, Castiel poured two shots of whiskey from a bottle he kept in the cupboard; the boy tossed one back with a grateful look, and kept eating.

“You want to maybe tell me your name?” Castiel asked, seating himself across from the boy and taking the second shot for himself. “Maybe how it is you’ve ended up in my kitchen… dressed as a woman?”

The boy slowed in his eating for a moment, eyeing Castiel warily. When he saw no anger there, no accusation, just simple concern and curiosity, he nodded.

“Name’s Dean,” he muttered, voice gruff from disuse. Castiel had guessed the boy hadn’t talked much, if he was keeping up his charade as a female. “It’s… well, it’s a long story.”

“Does the man with the scar know that you’re a boy?” Castiel asked.

Dean frowned. “Alastair,” he said, shaking his head. “No, sir. Thinks I’m a girl.”

Castiel shook his head in disbelief. “How’ve you managed that, Dean? Far off, you could pass, but up close, I could see straight away that you were pretending.”

Dean drank back the last of his tea and without asking, Castiel retrieved a clean glass and a ceramic pitcher of water, pouring him a glass. Dean ducked his head in thanks and drained the glass in an instant, breaking Castiel’s heart a little as he did. It was clear the boy – or woman, as this Alastair seemed to think him – wasn’t kept at all well fed. The others in Alastair’s gang had been bordering on portly, so it wasn’t lack of supply; the ugly leader’s lean frame, Castiel suspected, was from the lung disease sure to take him within a few months.

“Alastair’s blind in his one eye,” Dean explained after wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Near as much in the other. Got knifed in the face ‘fore I knew’im. Kinda wish I’d been around to see it, though.”

Castiel chuckled softly. “Kinda wish I had been as well,” he agreed, and the boy smiled.

“Like I was sayin’, man can’t see worth a damn, and if I keep to myself and don’t talk much… well, it was easier when he took me away to begin with, I was smaller then, but now… well, so long as I don’t talk, don’t let him paw at me…” Dean trailed off, cheeks coloring.

“What about the others?” Castiel asked.

The boy snorted. “Alastair won’t let’em so much as look at me, you kiddin’? Don’t let him after me, he sure as hell won’t let them after me neither.”

Castiel sighed and poured more whiskey. “How in heaven’s name did all this get started?”

Two more quick shots of liquor slugged back, and Dean began his tale.

 

Dean had grown up on a meager homestead out Kansas way, just him, his father, and his brother. He’d had a mother once, he explained, a hardy woman of bright beauty, body and soul, but it was a hard life in the West and sometimes accidents happened that couldn’t be planned for. 

Dean was a young one when it happened, his baby brother just an infant in swaddling when they lost their mother. It had been a hard winter and people were pinching pennies everywhere they could as spring rolled in, though the Winchesters – for that was Dean’s surname, it would seem – were doing well enough with their few fields and one old horse. The owner of the town’s general store wasn’t doing near as well, it seemed, and had begun cutting his supply of kerosene with other oils and chemicals he found that could stretch out what he had and allow him to get more coin for his product.

It worked out well enough for him, but not quite as good for Mary Winchester, who died almost instantly when the lamp at her bedside unceremoniously exploded and set their little house ablaze.

The townfolk had been kind enough to help rebuild the place, with John Winchester as lost in his grief as he was, and the ladies of the town had even brought them baskets of bread and preserves to help them get along for that first hard year. But when John’s grief didn’t dissipate and he began drowning it in cheap women and cheaper whiskey, the people of Tecumseh, Kansas, didn’t want much to do with him, or his two grubby little boys.

They looked on with a pitying gaze when the elder boy walked into the two proper, paid with coins pilfered from his father’s pocket when the man was in his drunken stupor, to buy milk and flour. It was a damn miracle, they said, that the infant boy even survived, but they chalked it up to the hardiness of the people of the Kansas, expecting that perhaps they might grow into fine men should they make it to their adult years.

By the time Dean Winchester reached his early teen years, he was known around Tecumseh as a troublemaker and a thief, among other things. His father had sold off most of their land, leaving them with little in the way to live on, and Dean was known for nicking eggs, milk, and the odd lamb from their neighbors. He’d never been caught in it, which is why the local sheriff, a man by the name of Singer that had been friends with the elder Winchester in their youth, managed to keep most of the local rabble-rousers at bay when they got in their fervor and wanted to string the boy up. 

The few that ignored the sheriff met the business end of Dean’s shotgun if they dared approached the old house, now busted up and broken down, on what remained of the Winchester homestead.

 

It had been a hot summer two years prior when a dangerous man with a piercing gaze showed up at the old homestead, claiming that John Winchester owed him money and he was there to collect his due.

Sober for a change, John had pushed both boys in the house and tried to bargain with the man while Dean snuck a glance out of a busted kitchen window. There was something unsettling about him, even in his clean clothes and new white hat; his smile seemed sickening and false, his eyes strangely light and piercing. John referred to him as ‘Azazel’, a name Dean vaguely remembered from their church-going days and, in recent years, from frightened whispers about town.

The creature that went by the name – for the people of Tecumseh so feared and reviled him that they hardly wished to admit he was one of God’s own – was a particular kind of evil, the kind even the strongest of men feared would visit their town. He traveled with a gang of like-minded rustlers, but where they were after their fortunes in cash and cattle, Azazel was after something else.

He had a penchant for children, they said. More than once he had whisked away a boy-child, never to be seen hide or hair of again.

“You owe me, Winchester,” Azazel had drawled.

Shaking from the lack of liquor in his system, John had shaken his head. “Got nothing for ya here, Azazel. Ain’t even owning my own land these days, got nothing.” Azazel had smiled wider, and Dean remembered feeling chilled to the core at the look of it.

“Got something I might want, I reckon,” Azazel said, pausing to take a long drink from a flask at his hip. He smile only seemed to grow further. “Got a boy in there, ain’t ya? Little Samuel, ain’t it? Reckon I could make use of’im, keep my saddle for me.” The men in his gang had chuckled at his words, and John had blanched.

“I’ll get your money,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “I’ve… I’ve got a horse, a good mare. I can sell her in town, get what I owe and then some.”

Azazel pretended to consider, then shook his head. “Naw… naw, I ain’t got time for all that. Need to be moving on soon enough. I’ll just take that boy of yours with me, Winchester. Don’t worry, I’ll treat’im gentle enough.” More laughter marked his words, and John began to panic.

“He’s too… he doesn’t know,” he stammered, shaking his head. “Take Dean,” he finally said. “Take Dean with you, he’s grown, he’s strong, do you a good turn.”

Dean had only been fifteen, and was struck with terror at those words. Recounting the tale, he was loathe to admit how frightened he had been, but he had to make Castiel understand why he had gone along with what came next. He didn’t tell the doctor, however, how he had begun to shake, gripping his younger brother tightly, his bladder letting loose at the thought of what might happen.

Azazel had laughed, long and loud and hard, and his gang had joined him. “Nah, little too big for my tastes, I’m afraid. ‘Sides, heard stories of your boy all the way down to Wyoming territory. No, I don’t need that kind of attention following me around.” 

He moved to dismount and John Winchester did the first brave thing he had done in years: he brandished the shotgun that Dean kept by the door of the house, and shook his head.

“You ain’t takin’ my boy, Azazel,” he warned.

The laughter drained from the outlaw’s face. “You don’t wanna do that, Winchester. There’s more’n half a dozen of us, only one of you.”

“Still could drop you before you reached the stairs,” John warned.

“Still coming in, if you don’t hand him over,” Azazel snapped.

And John broke. The brief sense of bravado gave way to cowardice and the need for a drink, and he shook his head. “You ain’t,” he said, voice whiny and desperate. “You ain’t. I’ll give you… I’ll give…”

And then it seemed a light went off in his head, and he glanced back into the house for a long second, shame-filled eyes meeting Dean’s for just a moment before he turned back out and spoke.

“I’ll give you my girl,” he spoke quickly.

Azazel’s eyes had narrowed. “Your what now?”

“My… my daughter. Dean’s twin, Deanna,” John said.

“Since when you got a daughter, Winchester?” Azazel asked, clearly skeptical. 

“Since always,” John told him, gaining composure as he lied. “Kept her in, didn’t need no one creeping after her when it was just me to keep he safe. She’s… she’s a rough thing, not learned in being a girl since her poor mother died, but she does me no good here. Just… just another skirt for the boys in town to chase after and I reckon I’m done keeping her out of their reach. You take her with you. She can cook, look after your animals. It’s a bargain, ain’t it? Can’t get a woman for the price I owe, can you?”

Azazel stared after him a long moment, clearly weighing his options. Winchester still held the shotgun, and a blast at that range could easily take out any of his men, or Azazel himself. It wasn’t worth the risk.

He put on his slick smile once again. “Well round her up, Winchester,” he said, earning hoots and hollers from his crew. “My man Alastair here deserves a reward after our last job, I reckon a little bride’d do him some good.”

 

Everything after that was rushed, Dean’s head spinning and his stomach sour as his father forced him into an old dress of his mother’s, tying a big dusty bonnet onto his head.

“Don’t talk,” he warned, the scent of whiskey seeping out of pores enough to make Dean gag. “Don’t say a damned word ‘til you get them far away from this place, you hear me boy? You ain’t been nothin’ but a thorn in my side since your mother’s dead and you sure as shit ain’t gonna ruin this. Your brother, he’s got potential to be somethin’, somethin’ good. You’re just a no-good thief and goddamn Mary, and I don’t want you ruinin’ him. This is your chance to do some good.”

By the time Dean was thrust out the door and yanked up onto a frightening scarred man’s horse, Azazel and half of his gang was gone, and Dean had begun a silent life as Deanna, his own twin.


	3. Chapter 3

“Christ almighty,” Castiel swore, shaking his head. Since venturing out of the respectable civilization of Boston, he had met a few number of people he would have considered something less than civilized, as kindly as he could put it, but this was the worst of it. A father selling his own son as an outlaw’s bride? It was vile.

He reached out in a fit of compassion, resting his palm over where Dean’s hand lay on the tabletop, still gripping at an old handkerchief that Castiel had given him to use as a napkin.

“You don’t have to go back to that, Dean. I want to help,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll find a way to get you out, I promise.”

The boy nodded, his gaze dropping to his hand on the table, still covered by Castiel’s. The doctor flushed and pulled it away, unable to meet the boy’s eyes in the moments after. His words had been honest – he did want to help. But he had to be mindful, of both the boy’s situation, and of the rumors he had done his best to dispel when he left Boston and set his sights on spending out his days in Perdition.

Snide remarks behind ladies’ fans and clouds of cigar smoke could simply ruin a reputation in Boston. Out in the West, they could mean a hanging.

Castiel sighed. “How old are you, Dean?”

“Seventeen,” the boy responded, sitting up a little straighter in his chair, the way all boys his age did when talking on their age and experience, wanting to see a bit older and a bit more mature. It had a comical effect see Dean pull on that shroud of bravado, with his sitting there wearing a lady’s calico and bonnet, but Castiel knew better than to even crack a smile. “Eighteen come January,” Dean added.

“Well, you’re a man at that age, good as any other,” Castiel told him, standing up. He took Dean’s empty plate and glasses and put them in the washbasin, ready to deal with later on. There were more important things at hand. “It’s all up to you. I can help you, if you like. Find you a way outta this mess your father sold you into. Or I can keep my peace, let you on your way with this… Alastair fellow. Just by looking, I can tell you he’ll be dead before you see eighteen.”

Dean’s eyes widened and he shook his head. A few more pinned curls fell from beneath his bonnet and in a fit of annoyance, he ripped it from his head and threw it to the table, the last of his too-long hair falling in his face.

“Alastair dies, his crew’ll think I done it,” he said, voice shaking the slightest bit. “They’re already after me as it is, they won’t think twice after that.”

Castiel resumed his seat, frowning. “Dean, may I ask…? After all this time, why do you let them run you around? What happened to this Azazel character?”

Dean sighed. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and scrubbed a tired hand over his face.  
“Azazel’s dead, from what I hear,” he said, sounding even more fatigued than when he had arrived. “He and Alastair got into it a couple months back, after we been run outta Bodie for Azazel goin’ at some kids. Folks in some places ‘fraid of him, other places, they don’t let him set down a stake, you know?”

Castiel nodded. It was a strange world out in the wilds of America, with some little towns quaking in their boots at the thought of lawless man roaming their streets, and others banding together to take up arms against him. Perdition seemed to strike a nice balance, the people none too quick to march a man to a noose but not likely to suffer any rowdiness beyond what’s expected. Castiel had a mind that it had a good deal to do with Miss Ellen, the owner of the local saloon and employer of his patient, Ash, still sleeping off the pain of his broken leg in an upstairs room. 

Rumor had it that a man once made the error of mistaking Miss Ellen’s daughter, Miss Joanna Beth, for a dime and dollar whore. Same rumor had it that Miss Joanna Beth might’ve slit him from neck to navel with the knife she wore in her garter, had her mother not intervened. All the same, the man walked away with a bloodied nose and a broken hand for his troubles.

Folks didn’t much bother with towns that had a lady like Miss Ellen in residence.

“Alastair said he was tired of running every time Azazel got an itch, and Azazel said somethin’ bout having best left Alastair rotting in some jail down in Mexico, and they drew on each other right quick,” Dean went on. “Ended up parting ways without so much as a handshake. Then we hear Azazel been out to a place called Desert Lake, out in Utah? Run into some man he knew as a boy, and the kid got his revenge.”

Castiel let out a low whistle. “No love lost there, I’m sure.”

Dean snorted. “Not a bit,” he agreed.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Castiel cocked his head to the side and frowned. “Then why stay? With Alastair, that is. Why stay at all once you were out of Tecumseh?”

“Heard Alastair talking, that first night,” Dean said with a shudder, memories of being stranded out in the brush with the outlaws, in a dress, no gun or even a knife to defend himself. “Told his boys to keep an eye out, that if I took a runner it was shoot to kill, and they’d be back to get Sammy to pay the debt. Azazel’s word.”

“Christ,” Castiel cursed again. It seemed the young man at his table had been cut off at every pass during his short, difficult life. “And then?” he prodded. “After Azazel was gone?”

Dean didn’t answer for a long moment. His eyes were cast down, staring at his own hands in his lap; to Castiel it seemed almost as though the boy were wondering at their helplessness, tied with invisible bonds of family and protection.

“Was afraid,” Dean finally spoke up in a gruff whisper. He wiped at his face with the handkerchief, and Castiel dutifully ignored the tears. “Never… never knew if word’d get back to Azazel, if he’d go for Sammy. And then when we heard he’s dead… well I just didn’t know how.” 

He looked up at Castiel with wide, vulnerable eyes. There was pain there that Castiel knew nothing could erase, long years held against his will, subjected to God only knew what, at the hands of evil men. The pain that plucked at Castiel’s own chest at the sight was a surprise to the doctor; he barely knew the boy.

“Not many folks’d listen to someone like me, finding me like this,” Dean went on, gesturing to his dress to indicate the strange circumstance. “They’d just as soon spit on me as look at me. God knows I ain’t been innocent, even before Pa sent me out to’em, I had my run-ins with… with trouble. And the things I had to do just to… God knows most folks’d laugh it off, have a queer story to tell their friends and leave me to my end.”

“Guess I’m not most folks, then,” Castiel responded.

“Guess you ain’t,” Dean agreed, and they sank into silence.

 

Castiel glanced out the frilly lace curtains the preacher’s wife in town had brought him for the kitchen windows not long after he had moved to Perdition. The sun was beginning its slow descent, the sky darkening to a burnished gold with the coming of the night. Alastair and his gang would have drunk their fill by now, and Miss Ellen wouldn’t put up with any roughhousing for very long. They’d be back soon.

“He said you’d… you’d been bleeding?” Castiel asked cautiously. “Alastair, when you’d arrived. They were bringing you to me for… female troubles?”

Dean gave a barking, bitter laugh. “Female troubles, right,” he agreed with a humorless smile. “Alastair… that first night, he starts tellin’ me that I have to say if I have my blood, cos he won’t touch a woman who’s dirty down there. So I tell him right off, I have it, and he backed off for a few days.”

“That’s all it took?” Castiel asked, surprised. “Never thought a man of his… type… would have even a problem with something so… well, natural, I suppose I should say.

Dean smirked. “Even outlaw trash has their limits, doc,” he said, shaking his head.

“And after that?” pressed Castiel. “Surely he realized that it isn’t meant to last more than a few days?”

Dean shook his head. “Alastair is a lot of things, but bright ain’t one of’em. Kept him off me that way for a long while, just tellin’ him somethin’s gone wrong, that it’s hurtin’ and bleedin’ constant.”

“He never asked to see proof?” Castiel asked. The whole situation was so ludicrous, but not totally unbelievable; if a man was dull enough to run around with an eye rotting out of his skull and lungs full of disease, he might be just enough the same to believe his faux bride’s stories.

“Snuck blood from the chuck where I could,” Dean replied. “Bloodied my sleeping roll. Killed a chicken or two when I had to… took my teeth to my arm if I needed. Kept him satisfied that I was too filthy to touch.”

Castiel marveled. The boy certainly was smart; in a different life, he mused, Dean Winchester might have had a brighter future ahead of him than what his father had afforded him.

“And he never…?” Castiel asked. It was hard to believe, much as he wanted to think that Dean had escaped any further abuse, Castiel had seen the worst of it on those who passed through town, or saloon girls who came looking to start over. Men could be cruel creatures, all the worst when living out of a saddle.

Dean flushed, and Castiel immediately regretted his words.

“I maybe,” Dean started, then cleared his throat and looked away. “I maybe… done things. That’d keep him out of m’skirt, as it was. Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of, you do what you have to if you gotta survive.”

The silence drew out between them for a long moment before Castiel spoke again.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pressed you,” Castiel said with a sigh. “What you did to survive is no one’s business but your own, and you’re right, it’s nothing you should be ashamed of having done under duress.”

Dean was silent a moment longer before speaking again. “Not somethin’ I’d be ashamed of, duress or otherwise, if it was somethin’ I wanted to do. Ain’t nobody’s business but mine what I do, or with who.” He was quiet and sullen, as if daring Castiel to disagree.

Instead, the doctor nodded. “True enough,” he agreed quietly. “Sometime I think folks think too much on who a man is with than what he does. Can’t see the harm in spending your time with… with someone you care for.”

Their eyes met across the dimming kitchen and there was an understanding there. It seemed the two men, from worlds so far apart, had found a common ground.

With a sudden surety to his voice, Dean asked, “So how’re we gonna get me out of this?”


	4. Chapter 4

It came about simple enough. Dean had been quite vocal on Alastair’s aversion to womanly bleeding, so the simplest plan that Castiel had proposed had been the best one. When the whoops and hollers of the scarred man and his gang began echoing down the road towards Castiel’s home, he had Dean lay out a table in his exam room, sheet pulled up to his neck just in case Alastair wanted to see things for himself. The doctor dampened rags left from his treatment of Ash’s wound and when the dried blood ran red again, he wiped it over his hands and forearms, having rolled up his shirtsleeves, and went out to meet the outlaws as they approached.

Alastair pulled up his horse short when he spotted the doctor in the light of the kerosene lamp he kept on his porch through the night, to alert passersby to his medical sign, should they need help after darkness had fallen. Even in the evening light, Castiel could see the curled lip expression the scarred man wore, clearly disgusted by the display.

“Where’s the girl?” he demanded warily.

Castiel gave his best weary sigh. “I did what I could to help her,” he replied.

“You tellin’ me you done killed my woman?” Alastair growled in his low rasp, coughing even as he spoke.

Castiel took another step forward. “Are you telling me you carried that girl around for two years, bleedin’ constant as she was, and expect me to work some magic in a few hours?” he shouted back, voice rife with righteous fury. It wasn’t hard to put on; he hated this man, for what he had done to Dean. He hated men like him, who tore up the countryside and put kind and decent folk through hell just for living. “After all you put her through? Poor thing was skin on bones, dehydrated and malnourished, on top of the cancer eatin’ her alive from the inside out. You got some nerve blaming me for her death. This blood should be on your hands, not mine!”

To punctuate his words, he threw the bloody rag he had carried out with him and Alastair jerked back so that it wouldn’t touch him, hitting his saddle and falling to the ground. He coughed and glared, spat at the ground before speaking.

“She died at your hands, it’s your problem puttin’ her in the ground,” he said slowly, trying to absolve himself of what the doctor had been saying. “She’s dead on your table, I ain’t got nothin’ doin’ with her no more!”

“You may as well have put a bullet in the girl,” Castiel responded angrily. “You’re just damned lucky I haven’t sent word to Sheriff Mills, have you brought up on charges for what you done!”

“Can’t blame me for it!” Alastair replied, sounding just a little bit panicked. Shooting a man dead was one thing; one fellow draws on another, someone is bound to die, and no one can be blamed for shooting back. But it was different if it was a woman, a girl even; Alastair knew well enough from Azazel’s exploits that a crowd could get in the mood for a hanging if a young one was killed. “Can’t blame me for a sickness, I fed her and kept her well!”

“You best just get on your way,” Castiel replied with a glare. It faltered for a moment, just a moment, as his sense of right got the best of him. “You best take the first road out of town and keep going, head on towards Nevada, see if you can’t find a doctor to take a look at you there. I don’t want you on my property, but that cough of yours is gonna get worse if you don’t see to it.”

Alastair coughed, spit, and reared his horse back without so much as a word. He shouted to the rest of his boys and they did the same, taking to the road and heading opposite the way they came, straight out of Perdition and on towards the desert.

Castiel didn’t think the man would live to see Nevada.

He stayed out there, peering down the road, until even the dust the horses kicked up as they went was no longer visible. He was grinning as he turned and headed back up the porch stairs, hurrying towards the examination room to tell Dean the good news; he stopped short when he saw the boy, waiting there in the parlor.

 

Dean must have found a pair of his surgical scissors in the examination room, because he had shorn the long carefully curled locks from his head, leaving his sandy hair short and messy. They’d have to find a decent barber to fix it into something presentable, but Castiel knew immediately that the boy was probably just happy not to hide it beneath a bonnet any longer. As if to prove that point, Dean grinned and ran a hand through his messy hair, shaking out a few loose strands from his impromptu cut.

Castiel had brought down a pair of old canvas trousers that he didn’t wear much anymore, and an old white cotton pullover that had gone grey and dingy during Castiel’s early days in Perdition, when he’d tried to launder his own things and only made a mess of it. These days, Castiel sent his linens out to a washerwoman in town, who cleaned his things for a dollar or two a week, dependent on how bad his surgery had been. But for the time being, he thought his old things would be good for Dean, until the boy filled out and grew some and needed new. He had left the clothing in the examination room, thinking the boy might like to change once he knew he was out of harm’s way. 

Dean must have heard the conversation outside, or at least Alastair’s retreat, because he had abandoned the old worn dress he had arrived in and slipped into the clothing Castiel had brought, clearly more comfortable to his form. The trousers fit him well, only an inch or so long at the cuffs. The shirt was a little larger than need be, with Castiel’s frame a little wider and a little more muscular than the boy’s, thanks to his advance in age of some eight years. It hung loose on Dean’s arms and he Castiel had forgotten he’d removed the buttons to mend other clothing, leaving the shirt hanging half open down the front, the boy’s lean chest rising and falling as he took his first few breaths of freedom.

Castiel had to keep mentally berating himself, reminding over and over again that this was just a boy, a child, who had been through hell and high water for the past few years, and probably just as bad before with a mother lost to fire and a father lost to grief. He licked his lips and took a step backwards.

“He’s gone,” he said after a long moment. “You’re free now.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed with a nod. He took a step closer, barefoot on the polished wooden floors. “How about that? All in a day. Just meet a fella and you fix’im up, just like that.”

Castiel swallowed hard. “Just did what decent folk’d do,” he replied. “Couldn’t let you go back to that creature, wouldn’t sleep right all the rest of my life. You deserve the chance to live your own life, same as anybody else.”

“That so?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow. “You ain’t thinkin’ on how you got me as property now? Wranglin’ me away from Alastair and his boys as you did?”

 

Castiel blanched, eyes gone wide. “Christ no!” he replied, aghast at the idea this boy would think himself bought and sold by an act of kindness. “Did you think that’s what this was, Dean? I may not be the church-going type of man, but I am as God-fearing as the next. I wouldn’t… I could never…!”

He stopped when he realized the boy was chuckling, a wide grin on his face and eyes alight with it in a way Castiel never could have imagined, after seeing him in such a miserable way as he had been when he arrived. Dean ducked his head a moment as his laughter faded, glancing back up to run his thumb across his lower lip and begin moving towards the doctor.

“I know, doc. Don’t need to go pitchin’ a fit,” the boy said, and Castiel sucked in a deep breath when the boy sidled up close to him, hands moving to rest on the leather of the doctor’s belt. “I was just windin’ you up. Had an idea of what sort of man you was the second you helped me up from the dirt. Been thinkin’ on it too, all this time.” Nimble fingertips made short work of the doctor’s belt buckle, moving quickly to attend to the buttons on his trousers. 

“Dean… Dean, you ain’t gotta… you ain’t gotta be doin’ nothin’ like this no more,” Castiel was stammering. His pulse was pounding and his hands were frozen at his side, even though he wanted nothing more than to reach out and wrap them around the boy. Even though that had been in his mind since he sat across from the boy at his own kitchen table. Moments like these, where he struggled for control, had a habit of affecting his speech; it had been that way since he was a boy, and time spent out in the frontier had left some of the easy way of talking slip into his posh Boston speech. 

He hadn’t been touched by any hand but his own in years, since before he’d even heard of the town of Perdition and made the decision to leave his east coast life behind. Since before word of his personal strangeness had reached the ears of his patrician family and their society friends.

Now, with this sweet boy pulling at the strings on his drawers and slipping a warm hand inside, he was damn near incoherent. Castiel kept trying to tell himself it was wrong, that this was a child, not able to make hide or hair of what he was doing after so much time just fighting to survive. He tried to tell himself it was all so wrong, that he was paving his own way to Hell, even as the boy nuzzled against his throat and used a free hand to undo a few of the buttons there on Castiel’s shirt.

There was a sweetness to the boy that he didn’t expect, a gentleness to his touch that made Castiel shiver. He had wanted this for so long; the man in his thoughts, his dreams, had been faceless but had a soft touch, warm hands, and something else, something Castiel could never quite put his finger on when he woke from his revelry, feeling sick and guilty for his thoughts. He understood it now, felt it in confidence of the boy’s touch. 

Dean was not ashamed.

“I told you,” Dean mumbled. “I knew what sort of man you was, just about as soon as I got a decent look… knew what sort of man I was even longer.”

Castiel pressed a fist to his mouth, biting back the strangled moan that threatened to erupt when Dean took him in hand, stroking slow and soft inside his cotton drawers. Dropping to his knees, Dean looked up at him from below long lashes and licked his lips.

“Don’t fret what you want, doc,” he said in a low voice. “Ain’t nobody’s business but ours.”


	5. Chapter 5

The years passed with such ease that Castiel scarcely seemed to notice. He had told the boy that he didn’t have to stay – Castiel would never hold him there, not after he’d lost years of his life to just such confinement with Alastair – but Dean had never been anything but happy to stay on in Perdition and make a life there. The townsfolk never questioned it, of course; plenty of folk out west lived huddled together, hard as it was to make a life in a land still so much uncharted. 

So far as anyone knew, Dean was just a hired hand. As time went by, most of town began to think of the men as kin, close as they were. The doctor had a good reputation in Perdition, mostly for helping where he was needed and never asking for more than anyone could give. The people grew to like Dean as well though it took a little time, cagey as he was when he first arrived. For many months it seemed he didn’t trust a soul save the doctor, but those who had even an inkling of his story – that he’d been taken from his family against his will – understood well enough why that was. 

Time had a funny way of changing things and within a few years, Dean Winchester was as well lauded a man as the Boston doctor who took him in. He helped Castiel with patients when needed, holding more than one man down when the doctor had to take a limb too diseased to save, and kept the land and animals. Folks about town chuckled now and again, musing on how hard things must have been for their east coast doctor before a real man of the west came to stay, taught him how to keep his own chickens and tend a field. 

What surprised Castiel most was the way his boy grew, springing up like a weed once he had a warm bed and a fully belly every night. In time he grew to be even taller than the doctor himself, broader in the shoulders and body more built where Castiel remained lean muscle. It didn’t make any difference between them, the two keeping house the same as they ever did.

Should anyone have asked, Dean had a bed of his own in one of the many second story rooms in the doctor’s home. The man who had ordered the place built, the crooked old Crowley, had wanted something he felt suited his stature and prestige, and the house was solid but sprawling. Truth was, should anyone have asked to see it, Dean’s bedroom would have seemed a little too quiet and undisturbed, the air thick and stale, having gone many a month without so much as a window open. They had a girl in from town each week to give the place a cleaning, but their private spaces were off limits and Dean made sure to at least dust once in a while and keep up appearances. 

Most mornings found Dean curled around his doctor in the master bedroom they shared, sheets hanging low at the waist to fend off the summer heat. Sunday mornings were their favorite, when the church folk in town made their way to services and picnics lasting late into the afternoon, no visitors by to interrupt. 

 

Dean woke and smiled into the late morning sunshine still streaming in through the window, nudging at the doctor who still slept soundly, his face pressed against the hollow in Dean’s throat. Dean moved and stretched as best he could without waking Cas – for in the years that passed, the man who shared his bed had become that to Dean, ‘Cas’, a simple but affectionate shortening of his Christian name that no one else in Perdition ever called him. Dean’s shuffling woke the doctor, who yawned sleepily and smiled, pulling his boy closer and heaving a soft, pleased sigh. They touched, fingers skating across bare skin in the slow languid pathways draped in the soft relaxation that could only come from men who had slept well after finding their bliss.

“Morning Cas,” Dean intoned, smiling at the put-on glare coming from the doctor’s all too blue eyes. It always made Dean laugh, seeing again and again how much his doctor hated the mornings, in spite of a profession that could drag him from his bed at all hours.

Castiel gave a grumbling little growl and buried his face back down against Dean’s chest, breathing in the clean salt-scent of his skin with a sigh. Dean laughed gently, feeling Castiel smile against the vibration in his chest, and pulled his fingers through the doctor’s messy dark hair.

“C’mon, Doc… we just going to lay about all day? Hens need feeding, need to put Peaches through her paces… and ain’t you gotta see about Rufus Turner and that bum knee of his today?” Dean teased quietly.

Castiel groaned. “Won’t be much leavin’ this bed if you keep that up, boy,” he growled in response.

Dean grinned. The first few months of their strange courtship had him calling Castiel simply by ‘Doc’, feeling too much a stranger to use his Christian name in spite of sharing his bed. As time went by and it became easier, Dean simply called him Cas so long as there was no one nearby to hear, and later not caring if it be overheard at all. Still, for all his flaws, Dean knew the power of words, and knew calling his doctor by his old nickname was more than enough to send the man into a tizzy, which was just what he was hoping for.

Dean was laughing, slow and deep, the nearest a man his age could get to a giggle, and Castiel mouthing wet nibbling kisses all along his chest when the bedroom door burst open. The two had been far too enchanted with what they were doing to have heard the knock at the front door or even the uneven gait tromping up the stairs, and were caught completely off guard when the impromptu visitor arrived.

“Chrissake man, whatchu doin’ you ain’t hearin’ me hollerin’ for ya?” Ash announced loudly at the door before stumbling back a step in surprise.

Castiel dove for the bedclothes, yanking blankets and coverlet up around himself to cover his nakedness, but Dean moved more slowly, methodically. Castiel knew in an instant by the way the younger man glanced to the side table that he was mentally calculating how long it might take to get to the sidearm he kept there for safety’s sake.

Ash rolled his eyes. “Chrissake, man, gotta get the wax outta your ears, I sure as heck don’t need to be walkin’ in on folks all unshucked.”

Dean seemed relaxed by the nonchalant tone to the other man’s voice, but Castiel watched him all the same. It had been six or seven years since a passing cowhand had stopped in to have a wound on his knee stitched and dressed, and the uncouth man had dropped a few unkind words Dean’s way when he saw the younger man’s interactions with the doctor. Castiel was certain that if he hadn’t put a hand on Dean’s arm at just the last second, he’d have killed the man.

Castiel slipped from the bed and pulled on the cotton drawers he’d tossed aside the night before, searching the messy floor for his trousers.

“What can I do for you, Ash?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level. He liked Ash well enough; Miss Ellen’s hired man was friendly, if a little strange, and had a good head on his shoulders when the situation called for it. Wiry, with a penchant for shortened sleeves and going hatless on hot days, Ash had endeared himself to much of the townsfolk when he began sporting a strange haircut all his own design, clipping dirty blonde locks close to his scalp in front but letting they grow long and loose in the back. He was an oddity, but a pleasant one, unlikely to quarrel.

Castiel hoped that reputation held out.

“Need you down at the saloon,” Ash explained. “Miss Ellen is laid up with another one of her headaches.”

Castiel shook his head. “She finally see reason, going to let me pull that bad tooth of hers?” he asked.

Ash gave a hiccupping laugh. “Lord no,” he replied. “Miss Ellen is laid up in bed, she let Miss Jo run things downstairs and… well you know how it is with Miss Joanna. Got a whole slew of men in early this morning callin’ out for whiskey, one of’em calls the place a doggery and the next you knew it’s turnin’ a whole bucket of blood.”

Castiel sighed, and turned to retrieve a shirt from his dresser. Slipping easily into the clean white linen, he started towards the bedroom door.  
“Just let me get my bag, Ash. You need me to saddle up Peaches, or did you bring the wagon?”

“Figured on bringing you back to town proper with me, so I got the wagon,” Ash replied with a nod, stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his denim overalls. “Just need you to getcha things and we’ll head out.”

 

Left alone with the man from town, Dean drew a deep breath where he still sat in the bed he and Castiel shared, and fixed his gaze upon Ash.

“Look, Ash, you gotta know—” he began, but Ash waved off his words.

“Hey, you don’t gotta be explain’ to me,” he said with a shrug. “I been on a cattle drive or two, I know how it is.”

Dean nodded, still eyeing the other man skeptically. “I expect you know to button up?” he asked.

Ash snorted. “Hey do I look like some jabberjaw churchlady to you?” he replied. “Ain’t my business to be spreadin’ about town, I don’t say a word bout nobody to nobdy. Mind my own, ‘spect everybody else do the same.”

Dean closed his eyes, breathing a deep sigh of relief. “Thank ya, Ash. Thank ya.”

“Course,” Ash responded with a shrug. “Hell’s bells, everybody already says they ain’t seen the doctor smile a once ‘til you rolled in, s’long as folks are happy, why we gonna bother them, hey?”

Castiel returned then, dressed in his day coat, black leather satchel in his hand.  
“Should we be off?” he asked. “Are there many injuries?”

“Not all bad, just some stitchin’ need doin’, I think,” Ash replied, nodding. “Cuts and bumps mostly, and this one fella name of Walker, got his toe shot off right through his boot! Sheriff Mills be haulin’ him off to the hoosegow soon as it’s all stopped bleedin’. Oh, and Miss Joanna could use a look-see.”

Dean sat up a little straighter, clearly alarmed. “Miss Jo?” he asked. He and the saloon keeper’s daughter got on well, sharing a penchant for good whiskey and loud conversation. Castiel was a quiet man at heart, but saw no harm in having a drink while Dean laughed about with Miss Joanna. “She alright?”

Ash grinned, teeth stained with tobacco. “Shoot, ‘course she’s alright,” he said with a laugh. “Just done split her knuckles open on that Walker fella’s teeth!”


	6. Chapter 6

It took the better part of an hour for Ash to spur Miss Ellen’s old mule and wagon into town and towards the Hellhound Saloon. The Hellhound had been opened in Perdition by Miss Ellen’s husband, Bill Harvelle, and when he found himself on the wrong end of a dead man’s hand in poker, the woman herself took the barman’s place. In all truth, the place hadn’t been running all too well with Bill at the helm, but Miss Ellen turned it around and made a success of it, in spite of some local objections to its name.

Sheriff Mills was waiting for them, looking more and more cross as the minutes past. It was more than a little unusual for a woman to be the law in any town, but Perdition had always gone a little against the grain; much like Miss Ellen, Jody Mills had taken the job after her husband, Perdition’s much lauded deputy, lost his life in a gunfight started by Crowley’s goons. With Crowley running the show, no one in town had wanted to take up the lost deputy’s star, and the sheriff turned tail and ran out of Perdition like the yellow belly he was. It was Jody who picked up her husband’s six shooter and rallied the folk to run Crowley out of town, winning their respect in the process.

Her sex served her well. A pretty woman with dark eyes and a pleasant face, she kept her dark brown hair pulled back in a long tail and wore the vestments of any small town sheriff, boots and all; in spite of her dress, more than one cowboy made the mistake of underestimating her and learned the hard way what it was like to be taken to jail by a lady of the law.

It looked like Gordon Walker was one of them. He sat scowling in a saloon chair, bloodied foot stretched out into the next, hands anchored in a pair of irons. Directly across from him, seated atop the bar and decked out in her finest, was Miss Joanna.

“About time you and the good doctor got back here, Ash,” Sheriff Mills drawled with a frown. “Anybody been bleedin’ out too bad, we’d’ve had a funeral ‘stead of a surgery.”

“This ain’t bad?” the bloodied man growled in response, gesturing to his foot. It was wrapped in clean rags that had been soaked in whiskey, something Castiel had insisted the locals practice after more than a few deaths from infection had occurred.

“Oh hush, you cross-grained heap,” Miss Joanna replied glibly. “Just lucky I aimed for your feet and not higher.”

Castiel sighed; he had expected just such a scene as soon as Ash had explained that Miss Joanna had been tending the bar. It wasn’t the first time he’d stepped in to bandage up the aftermath of her temper, and he was dead sure it wouldn’t be the last. Apart from the man with the bloodied foot, there were various other cowhands scattered about, covering in scrapes and bruises.

“Is the worst of it?” Castiel asked, gesturing towards Walker’s foot. “Or does someone else need attendin’ before this?”  
“The hell?” Walker spat. “I’m missin’ half my damn foot thanksta that piece o’calico, damn it all!” He yelped when the sheriff promptly smacked him upside the head.

“S’enough outta you, Walker,” she told him. “I’d just as soon send to Virginia City for a hangin’ warrant as I would drive you outta my town, so you best keep your peace.”

Castiel frowned. “I’d thank you not to insult Miss Joanna or this establishment, sir,” he added. “It is only by virtue of her kindness that I’m even here to see to your wounds, so you’d best button up.”

He knelt to inspect the injured man’s foot, peeling back the whiskey rags and inspecting the small stumps of the two toes lost to Miss Joanna’s bullet. He squinted and shook his head.

“Bleeding looks to have slowed up well,” he announced. “And I’ll need some clean rags for wrapping. So, this can keep for a few.” Standing, he turned towards the saloon owner’s daughter. “Miss Joanna? I’m told you have some busted knuckles need seein’ to.”

 

The good doctor spent the better part of his morning tending to the rowdy cowboys that had been roughed up by pretty Miss Joanna, wearing her Sunday best as it were. The lady herself had only garnered split knuckles and a scuffed knee, from where she had put the Walker fellow in his place and gotten scratched on the barbs of a low-hanging belt buckle. Walker was hauled off to jail by the sheriff, to spend a night or two thinking on the mess he’d caused, before she’d wrangle a posse to drive him to the outskirts of town and warn him never to come back. The other men involved were patched up and sent on their way, most choosing to leave of their own volition, since the local watering hole was now off limits to them.

He took a moment to visit with Miss Ellen, who had relented at least to taking some Oil of Clove for the ache in her jaw. Castiel vowed he’d pull out that bad tooth even yet.

The day was nice, the air warm but pleasant and the sun hanging high enough to keep too much of a sweat from crossing the doctor’s brow. Ash had offered to drive him home, but Castiel had declined; it had been too long, he insisted, since he’d had a real chance to stretch his legs, and besides, he wanted to stop off at Miss Mosely’s school and see to the children. A bad run of fever had put many of them to bed the week prior, and he thought it best to ask after them, so long as he was in town.

As he walked the wooden sidewalk towards the road that would lead him to Miss Mosely’s and then onward to home, he heard a girlish voice call out after him.

“Howdy there, Sawbones!” the voice called.

With a sigh, Castiel paused in his step. There were few in town coarse enough to call him by such a boorish name, and given that he had only just passed the parlor house full of the town’s soiled doves, he knew exactly who it must be.

He turned and tipped his hat. “Afternoon, Miss Ruby,” he called, addressing the Madame of the house, who was leaning out an upper balcony doorway.

“Fancy finding you in town, Sawbones,” she called back cheerfully, and Castiel grimaced.

For the most part, he understood why Perdition allowed such a place to exist. There were cowhands and rustlers, journeyman and settlers, all passing through town on a regular basis, heading out towards the larger cities or searching to go further west and seek their fortune. Female company could be few and far between, and with many of the more barbarous traits of men drawn to the forefront in the often lawless west, the virtue (and livelihood) of any good woman was in danger if there wasn’t someplace for the men to find their fun.

He supposed the women who lived in Ruby’s Place were pretty in their own way, but Castiel had never been himself drawn to the painted ladies, with their garish faces powdered in white lead and painted with rouge on their cheeks and lips. They bit at their lips to plump them and washed they eyes in the juice of lemon to brighten them, painting on beauty marks and burning their hair into ringlets to draw in their customers. Castiel had no stomach for it.

Miss Ruby herself had her dark hair coiled into waves and piled atop her head, a pink satin hat with plumes of white feathers perched atop the curls. She was dressed better than her girls would be, in a dress of the same pink satin that was low at the top to bear her shoulders and other assets, and high at the skirt to nearly rise past her knees. She wore stockings decked with bows, high heeled rose-colored shoes, and had rows of pearls strung around her neck.

“What can I do for you, Miss Ruby? Are you unwell?” he called, ignoring the flirtatious edge to her tone as she spoke. That was just her way, to make any and every man she encountered seem her most precious acquaintance. Castiel knew better than to fall for it.

Another tittering laugh echoed above him. “Just fine, doctor, I’m just fine,” she drawled out. “It’s just my girl Casey, you see. Gave her a nice cup of tea just last week, my special brew, our very favorite around here… pennyroyal, tansy, verbena… poor thing done been laid up ever since. Why don’t you stop in for a spell, give her a look-see?”

Castiel heaved another sigh. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been called in to attend to one of the painted ladies after they’d taken a cup of Ruby’s special brew. It was usually right after, when the retching and purging began. A week after, though, that could mean something all the worse. He glanced at the sun in the sky, and wondered if Ash might be so kind as to oblige him with a lift home after all, should he be kept as late as he thought he might.

“I’ll be up in a moment,” he relented, and headed towards the door.

 

Ruby’s Place was decked out in cheap lace and heavily scented perfume oils, with half-dressed women draped in shawls, sprawled out over furniture and smiling at him in what he assumed they felt was an inviting manner. When the first girl sauntered up to try and charm him, he held up his medical bag and tipped his hat at her disappointed pout before heading up towards the sick room. Miss Ruby always put the girls away when they were ill, in a near bare room at the end of the long hall where no gentleman callers might hear their moans of pain.

The sight that greeted Castiel there was not a good one. He had met Miss Casey now and again around town, a sprightly, dark-eyed woman with brown hair worn long and straight down her back. She had a fondness for the color red and most of her dresses were in the shade, though now she wore only a white petticoat stained with blood and vile-smelling yellow fluid. She was pale and sweating, head tipped back against the pillows and eyes squeezed shut. Castiel swore beneath his breath when he saw her.

He was with her for hours, finally emerging just after nightfall, to greet Miss Ruby once again. Even as the Madame attempted to press bills into his hands, he pushed her away.

“Damn it, Miss Ruby,” he spat, wiping his brow with his handkerchief. “You can’t keep doling out your ‘special tea’ without havin’ me called for. That girl is seriously ill, do you realize? She didn’t… pass everything. Even a bit of what you’re trying to push out gets left inside, it can kill a woman. Why didn’t you call me right as she became ill?”

Miss Ruby shrugged a bare shoulder. “Didn’t think you were needed,” she replied nonchalantly. “Casey always gets so dramatic, times like these. Why, it must be the third time this year alone. Keep to thinkin’ I may have to turn that girl out, send her off to be a dance hall gal. That tea ain’t cheap, ya know.”

Castiel glared. “You do this again, Miss Ruby, I’ll have to tell the sheriff.”

“Ain’t nothin’ doin’ here that the law don’t know about already,” Ruby replied, all flirtatious pretense dropped from her voice. “Ain’t no law can bind me or my girls. They do as they like, only pay me for a roof over their heads, ain’t no law against that. Ain’t no law against takin’ the tea when it’s needed neither, Sawbones.”

“You might’ve killed her,” Castiel responded. “Ain’t no law going to allow that.”

Ruby looked furious, but just as quickly masked her anger behind a carefully schooled flirtatious smile, the coy little grin she gave to her clients and used to charm her way out of trouble.

“Oh, doctor, I know you ain’t meanin’ to be so unkind,” she told him, smiling. “I know it can’t be easy for you, what with your boy runnin’ about town with a stranger and all. Must be awful lonely out at that big ol’ house of yours, without your boy around to… keep company.”

Castiel’s eyes narrowed. “What is it you mean to imply, Miss Ruby?”

She shrugged her shoulders, plucking a black lace shawl from off the back of a fainting couch in the main entrance of the parlor house and wrapping it over her shoulders.

“Just what everyone else in town been sayin’, is all,” she replied noncommittally. “That Dean Winchester been seen keepin’ time with a big ol’ trapper come down from up north, sellin’ his skins to Rufus Turner at the general store for the winter. Mighty big fella, too, burly fell with a French name, probably one of those fur trappers down from Canada. Ben Lafitte, they call’im.”

“What’s that got to do with Dean?” Castiel said before he could stop himself. 

Ruby grinned, knowing she had him. “Oh, nothin’ I’m sure. Harmless fun, like the folks say. Just that Dean and this Lafitte fella spent an awful lotta time together out behind Miss Ellen’s place… and even more time in one of her back rooms, if you see what I’m sayin’. Now I’m sure you just put that outta your mind, Sawbones, your little Dean is right back where you want him, ain’t he? Just maybe a passin’ fancy… though I did hear tell that this Lafitte fella will be back before the Fall sets in. Funny how that is, ain’t it? No one spends more than a dime and a day in Perdition, but your fella… that is to say, your workman… meets up with this trapper, and lo and behold he’s plannin’ on makin’ his way back once his business is done. Funny how that is, ain’t it?”


	7. Chapter 7

It was well past sundown by the time that Castiel was able to extricate himself from Miss Ruby’s clutches. The Hellhound closed down on Sunday nights, leaving Ash some time free, and he was more than happy to give Castiel a lift back to his home on Miss Ellen’s wagon, refusing any payment the doctor tried to give.

“Aw, shucks, no,” Ash had said, shaking his head. “Miss Ellen’d have my hide if I tried takin’ a dime from you, Castiel. She says yer good as family and that’s all right by me.”

His kind words did little to quell the storm brewing in Castiel’s mind, but they made the ride back a little easier, even as Castiel kept to himself and said little along the way. He knew that Ash just assumed he was tired after a long day of seeing to patients in town; word had already reached most of Perdition’s townsfolk that the good doctor had been seen slipping into Ruby’s Place, and heard arguing with its proprietor before leaving. Thankfully, Castiel was considered an honorable man among even the most puritanical of the people of Perdition, and it was assumed from the start that there was a soiled dove that needed a physician’s attending.

The porch lamp wasn’t burning at Castiel’s home, even though there were lights in the kitchen windows. Dean only hung the lamp out in front of Castiel’s medical sign when the doctor was home, but left a light burning in the kitchen window for any passersby who might need assistance otherwise. There were many a broken wagon wheel or lost calf that needed seeing to in the night, and those were the sorts of emergencies that Dean was equipped to handle on his own. Seeing it made Castiel smile, a little sadly. 

His boy had grown into a good man. Even if he wasn’t Castiel’s anymore.

 

Castiel thanked Ash and made his way up the porch stairs, medical bag swinging at his side and shoulders slumping as he walked. It had been a long day, and a bad one for all of its promising beginnings. His mind was already reaching back to those lonely days, the ones spent in the quiet little town, mostly alone and reading through the same few books he had brought with his meager possessions from Boston: the days before Dean arrived. It would be hard, going back to that, with all the joy that had been brought his way in the near ten long years he’d lived alongside the other man.

He wondered if he’d be able to do it.

The house was cool as he entered, and he knew Dean must have spent much of the day with the windows open, airing the place out to keep it habitable by night. There were still long weeks until the fall arrived, and the heat of the day had a way of clinging to a place long after the sun had set. Castiel was thankful for the comfort, even as he made a mental note that he’d need to take care to remember to do such things for himself, once Dean was gone.

There was a scent of supper in the air, and that surprised him. Usually on late nights, he’d eat in town and expect Dean to fix his own meal if he had stayed behind. Castiel followed the scent and found Dean sitting at the kitchen table, quick to get to his feet once Castiel entered.

“Guess Miss Joanna did a helluva number on those folks, yeah?” he asked. Even in the lamplight, Castiel could see his cheeks had a pink tinge; the doctor squinted and frowned, wondering what was the matter. 

“Got held up,” Castiel explained slowly. “One of Miss Ruby’s girls needed seein’ to. You fare all right today, Dean?”

Dean swallowed, nodding quickly and turning towards the stove. “Yeah, nothin’ doin’,” he replied with forced casualty.

 _This is it_ , Castiel thought. _He’s going to know someone has told me by now. This is him saying his goodbyes._

“Made us supper,” Dean explained, coming back to the table with a pan that had been keeping warm in the oven. “Nothin’ too fancy like, but it’ll keep us. Didn’t know if you’d be tuckin’ in back in town, it bein’ Sunday and all. ‘Spect Miss Joanna closed up the Hellhound as usual.”

He dished out a portion of beans and salt pork onto two plates set out on the table top. It was then that Castiel noticed the table had been dressed with an old picnic blanket as a tablecloth, and a bottle of whiskey stood waiting with two glasses. The old tea kettle was there, resting on a kitchen rag to keep it from scorching the blanket; a third plate held a small loaf of bread, fresh baked from the smell of it.

“Dean?” Castiel asked, suddenly confused. They weren’t like this; they took their meals together, but it was never made an affair. Dean didn’t even bother with the tea kettle much, cooking his own coffee in a pot on the stove when he wanted more than a draught of water or a shot of whiskey.

 

Dean flushed further and pulled at the sleeves of his shirt, and for the second time in a few sparse minutes, Castiel took note of a great change in their routine. Dean was dressed in his best bib and tucker, a light blue affair Castiel had gifted him the Christmas past, one that he only wore to town for funerals and the occasional baptism. His dirty blond hair, a kept short out of compulsion even after all this years, was side-parted and combed back neatly and wet with something glistening to hold it in place. He braced both hands on the back of his usual chair at the table and cast his eyes down.

“I s’pose it’s a bit silly after all,” he relented with a deep sigh. “Just wanted to be doin’ something nice for ya, is all. I’m right thankful for all you done for me, Cas. Don’t go on sayin’ it like I should, maybe don’t be showin’ it neither. Maybe I ain’t lived long enough to be sayin’ it, but these years have been the best o’my life, nothin’ but truth to that.”

Ten years, Castiel realized. He hadn’t looked at the calendar that morning, hadn’t had a chance to spy a date at all while in town, but the meal, and Dean’s cleaning himself up so nice… the time of year was right too, the night it began just about burned into his memory. Ten years to the day. It had been ten years since Dean had been dropped from a horse in his mother’s old dress, right at Castiel’s feet.

“Oh, Dean,” Castiel finally said, one hand drifting to cover his lips and stifle any deeper words of emotion from spilling out. Such things only made Dean uncomfortable, made Castiel feel the fool afterwards, cheeks burning in embarrassment even as the other man gruffly stumbled over his own words, trying to say without saying that he felt the same.

Dean drifted into his space, reaching to turn the key on the oil lamp and douse the light before reaching up to take Castiel’s face in his hands. Even in the dim light, Castiel knew that Dean must see the unshed tears shining in his eyes, and he did his best not to let them fall.

“These years, doc,” Dean said softly, lips so close as to brush the doctor’s as he spoke. “Wouldn’t trade’em for a thing. Wouldn’t trade’em for the world.”

 

Late into the night, Castiel draped himself across Dean’s back, enjoying the slickness of sweat on sweat everywhere their bodies touched. Dean had a way of keening low in his throat, wanting to cry out but holding it in for the sake of his pride, biting down on his lip and arching back against the doctor. Dean had grown taller, broader in the shoulders than Castiel over the years, but in moments like these, Castiel seemed to surround him even still, and Dean seemed to delight in that feeling of being held and overtaken.

In the back of his mind, Castiel kept thinking that this was the end, that he was losing Dean, that he was losing all of this, and he was determined to savor every last moment they had together. He laced their fingers together, sucked bruising kisses to the back of Dean’s neck, and whispered every last wonderful filthy thing he could think to say into Dean’s ear, delighting as the man beneath him broke, letting slip soft whimpers growing into long moans, curses falling from his lips even as he begged for more.

Most days left them too tired, too hurried, to really take each other apart like this. Castiel had thought on coming home from a bad day, unsettled and bone-tired, and slipping into his sheets to sleep like the dead. This was better, a thousand times so or more. There was a richness to it, the taste of Dean’s skin and the feel of his strong muscles working back against Castiel, as decadent as any finery put to a wealthy man’s table. Moments like these made Castiel feel powerful and strong, body and mind soaring on pleasures he could barely imagine in his own quiet moments.

This was everything to him.

 _Dean_ was everything.

Dean held him as they drifted off, arms wrapped around one another, enjoying a soft breeze filtering in through the window as it drifted across their heated skin. Dean pushed his fingers through the doctor’s sweaty locks, murmuring soft things he might never say by the light of day.

Not for the first time since that afternoon, Castiel wondered how he might get on without this.


	8. Chapter 8

Miss Ruby’s poison was still swirling about Castiel’s mind the next morning, even as Dean acted shy and sweet, the way he often did when they spent a long night together. Something of the boy that Castiel had swiftly come to love, all those years ago, still remained in the man at his side, in the teasing grin and the way he ducked his head, ears flaming, whenever complimented. It was love, after all; it had been something else, in those early days, the lust and need that came with finding another like-minded man, out in this forsaken place. But in the years that passed, it had grown into more, and Castiel had let the words slip more than once in their quiet moments. He loved Dean the way a man should love a wife, and he had long let go of the shame and the confusion that had come with such feelings.

His father had been of the church-going sort, and had taught Castiel that the greatest gift his god had bestowed upon man was love. Try as he might to feel sick over it, over what he felt, what he was, Castiel just couldn’t do it; love was the truest thing he knew, and he loved Dean. No god in any heaven could hate him for something so pure.

Dean was of a different breed of man. Words came hard to him, Castiel knew, and he expressed what he felt in different ways, touches of his hand and warm looks in his eyes. He’d told the doctor of his youth, the years before Alastair, when he suspected a few things about himself that his father had a line on as well. How the man had first made to beat it out of him, then stuck his head in the sand, pretending he didn’t notice. He’d have been relieved to be rid of the boy, Dean had intimated. 

“Must’ve seen a golden opportunity, with Azazel and his boys showin’ up,” Dean had said quietly one night, face burning in the shame of it and quiet tears on his face, tucked against Castiel’s shoulder.

“The man was a fool,” Castiel had responded, and pulled him up closer, taking Dean’s chin in his hand as he spoke. “Anyone thinkin’ on puttin’ you out of their house, Dean, they’re a damned fool. Not a better man walks this earth than you. I’d swear it on my life.”

 

Castiel felt a pain in his chest, the thought of losing Dean creeping up on him again in the mid-morning light of the parlor. _Damn him_ , he thought, for making me love him. _Damn him for making this place a home to me. Damn him for wanting to leave._

Dean had woken hours before the doctor that morning, body set on its own clock to rise with the sun and tend to the animals before they got to their whining. The chickens were fed, eggs placed in the larder, and with no plans on leaving the homestead for the day, Dean had taken the old mare, Peaches, out to pasture. Still with a smile on his face, he made hotcakes for their breakfast; with no one else around to see it, he took a moment to kiss and lick at the melted butter on the doctor’s lips over their breakfast table, grinning as the doctor still shivered and blushed at it, as though it were the first time.

When Dean cornered him in the parlor, backing Castiel up against the sideboard like he had done that first night so long ago, it was all the doctor could do not to break down. He’d tried so hard to resist, to be a good doctor and tend only to any pains that the boy might have had, but Castiel had been weak, so wonderfully weak, let the boy crowd him back and put his sinful lips to work until Castiel was biting his own fist to keep himself from crying out.

Castiel had felt guilty then, taking his pleasure from the boy, too young and too long abused to really understand what he was doing, and made a personal vow that it would never happen again. He buttoned his trousers, gently guiding Dean to his feet, and taking him to the washhouse, setting him a bath with water from a rain barrel, still warm from the day’s sun. 

He had meant to leave him to it, let Dean scrape away the grime from his captivity on his own, but before Castiel had known it, he was elbow deep in the water, giving Dean back some of his own pleasure with soap-slicked hands, watching with rapt attention the way Dean’s lower lip quivered and he threw his head back, eyes squeezed tight, when he found his release. And knowing he shouldn’t, knowing it was wrong, Castiel wrapped Dean in a blanket and led him back inside, up the stairs to Castiel’s bedroom; he must have been mad with lust, Castiel would reason later, finding no other excuse for the way he kissed the boy, biting and sucking at Dean’s lips, swallowing back the boy’s moans and enjoying the way he freely let his hands wander, groping down Castiel’s back and gripping his ass in return. It had to be madness, Castiel would tell himself, the way he stripped his boy down again and bent him over the creaky old mattress, taking him apart with gentle scrapes of his teeth and flickering curls of a searching tongue.

The growls coming from his own throat had been almost inhuman, so far gone just watching the way Dean bucked against him and pulled at his own hair, toes curling against the sheets and throat hoarse with crying out. He brought Dean to release again, this time without even using his hands, and damn near smirked into the boy’s skin, watching as his fingers scrabbled for purchase among the cotton sheets, curses falling from his sweet lips. He didn’t stop, not even as Dean shuddered through the aftershocks, not until he called out the doctor’s name in a low, pleading whine; that was when Castiel felt his spine lock and his body begin to shake, and he soiled his trousers, eyes rolling back in his head.

He had slept that night with Dean curled up against his chest, and Castiel had known that he was utterly lost to his sweet boy. He knew it still, and felt such crippling sadness that he nearly fell to the ground with the ache of it.

 

It must have read on his face, Dean’s expression softening and his hands moving to stroke gently at Castiel’s hips, once thin and soft from city life but grown with lean muscle from life out on the frontier.

“You doin’ okay, doc?” Dean asked, concern in his voice.

Castiel swallowed hard and pushed his hands away. “I’m fine, Dean,” he said quickly. The other man wouldn’t be so easily dissuaded, planting a palm on the sideboard on either side of Castiel’s hips.

“No you ain’t,” Dean responded, green eyes gone dark and searching. He ducked to peer into the doctor’s eyes, even as Castiel tried to look away. “What is it, Cas?”

Castiel swallowed again. “Just don’t want you… feelin’ obligated, about anything,” he said slowly, refusing to meet Dean’s eyes again as he spoke. He needed to remain strong for this, and he knew one glance at that handsome face, those sun-kissed freckles and soft green eyes, would break him.

Dean chuckled. “Ain’t exactly tit for tat, if that’s what you’re sayin’,” he said, voice low and thick with his own want. “If it were, I’d be spreadin’ you out on your back right here, wouldn’t I?” He paused to nuzzled against Castiel’s cheek. “Maybe I’ll be doin’ that later anyhow.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Castiel told him, trying to keep his voice from falling to tremors. “I just… I don’t want your pity, Dean. I don’t want you thinkin’ you have to be… to be doing these things, to keep a roof over your head, is all.”

Suddenly Dean stiffed, his eyes going wide a brief moment before the light that lived there seemed to dim and he let his hands fall to his sides taking a step back and out of Castiel’s space.

“Oh,” Dean said, voice quiet and flat, as though all the air had rushed out of his lungs. “Oh. I see how it is, then.”

“Dean?” Castiel asked, suddenly confused. The other man seemed so broken all of a sudden, shutting down the way he did when something prickled at him with emotional barbs; that didn’t make any sense at all. Dean was the one leaving; Castiel should be the one hurting.

“You just… I get it, it’s alright,” Dean told him, voice hollow. “You just don’t want me no more. I get it. I mean… m’not as young as I used to be, right? I didn’t think… way you talked me up, Cas, I thought this was… but it’s fine, I get it. I’ll get outta your hair. I think Miss Ellen was sayin’ something about needin’ another hand, I can…”

“What? No! Dean,” Castiel called out suddenly, pulling the other man back even as he turned to walk away. He looked so young suddenly, eyes wide and vulnerable, ghost of a tremble to his lips. “How could you think… Christ, Dean. Never. I’d never turn you out, never.”

“But why…?” Dean asked, uncertainty in his voice, and that same wild vulnerable look still in his eyes. Castiel wanted to grab him and kiss it away just as sure as he wanted to shove the other man down for hurting him so.

“You’re the one fixing to leave, Dean!” he finally spat out. “I heard all about it in town, you spending your time with that trapper that come through town. You’re the one wantin’ to go. I’d never… I could never…”

“Trapper? What, Benny?” Dean replied, suddenly confused.

Castiel’s heart was pounding in his chest, everything suddenly out in the open. He didn’t want to have this conversation. He wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening. He wanted to turn back the clock to the night before, to have that dinner together and that night together, one last time. That’s all, just one more day. He wasn’t ready for this; he would never be ready to say goodbye.

“Hear talk he’s fixin’ to come back through town, before the winter comes,” Castiel replied, struggling to and failing miserably to keep his voice from wavering. “Hear talk you’ll be heading back north with him when he does.”

Dean’s eyes grew impossibly wider, mouth dropping open a long second before he spoke again. “…the hell, Cas?” he said.

Castiel closed his eyes, not wanting to see the other man’s face any longer. “It’s alright, Dean. I understand. Eight years didn’t seem like much to begin with but out this far west, I know now how precious time can be. You want somebody younger, closer to you own age. I understand.”

Suddenly, Dean began to laugh, and the mirth of the sound cut Castiel to the quick. How could he be laughing? Had it all really meant so little to him? Wounded and angry, the doctor opened his eyes, ready to hiss out hurtful words, only to find Dean watching him with nothing but kindness in his eyes.

“Oh, Cas,” he said softly, reaching up to take the doctor’s face in his hands. “Oh, my crazy, jealous doc. Cas, I known Benny from when we was kids, and him and his old man would run through Tecumseh every harvest season. Was just doin’ some catchin’ up, is all. Benny’s got a girl down Louisiana way, he’s gone down to marry her and bring her back up north before the bad weather hits. You really think I was fixin’ to run out on ya?”

The relief hit Castiel so hard that his knees buckled and he gripped the sideboard to keep himself from falling to the ground. Dean’s hands quickly returned to flank his hips and keep him steady, thumbs circling against his sides in an oddly comforting gesture.

“I thought, I mean, people was sayin’,” Castiel stammered, practically shaking. _He’s not leaving_ , he kept chanting to himself in his own mind. _He’s staying. Dean is staying here with me_. “Miss Ruby said…” he started again.

Dean’s face pulled into a scowl. “Miss Ruby said? Miss Ruby’s words ain’t worth a piss in a bucket,” he said, shaking his head. He took one of Castiel’s hands and pressed it against his chest, covering it with his own hand. “You’re stuck with me here, doc. Long as you like.”


End file.
